The King Of Swing - Complete 1937 Jazz Concert No. 2

@ Marcas Reg. Printed in U.S.A.

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OSL-180

Exclusive trade mark
of Columbia Records

By GEORGE AVAKIAN

The fantastic success of the Benny Goodifian: Carnegie Hall Jazz
Concert album (issued by Columbia in 1950, twelve and a half years
after the epochal event took place in the unsuspected but fortunate
presence of a first-class recording machine) was one of those things
which Columbia — and Benny Goodman — figured could happen only
once in a lifetime.

We hardly expected that it would happen again,
But it did.
‘This is it. And it’s even better!

This is the same all-star Goodman Trio, Quartet, and Orchestra —
Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Gene - Krupa, Teddy Wilson, Ziggy
Elman, Jess Stacy, Chris Griffin, and all the rest of the great musicians
who helped Benny make “swing” a household word in the thirties.

. They play with the same fire and abandon which characterized the
a Carnegie Hall album, and they’re inspired by the applause and cheers
of the same fans, who worshipped them as jitterbugs and bobby-soxers
have never idolized any other band before or since.

But this time the music was accurately balanced for the micro-
phone by radio engineers, for these recordings are made from “air-
checks” of late evening broadcasts from all over the country. Most of
the original disks were taken off the air by a fan named Bill Savory,
now a Columbia Records engineer, who also did the remarkable editing
job which produced these final master tapes. The final result is the
most authentic original-Goodman sound ever captured on record,
whether the band was broadcasting from the Madhattan Room of the
Hotel Pennsylvania or the Palomar in Los Angeles.

Because the band kept up its broadcasts while on tour in 1937,
it’s now possible for a Goodman fan to enjoy the unique experience of
going “on the road” with the band and hearing how it played in an
ever-changing environment — an experience I almost had myself that
_summer* after spending much of my senior year at the Horace Mann
School for Boys hanging around Benny’s band as a favored friend of
Benny’s backstage major domo, Dwight Chapin.

The broadcasts gave us another advantage not possible in the
case of the Carnegie Hall album. We frequently had six or seven
versions of the same tune to choose from, so that there was no need to
put up with flagging inspiration or minor flaws. In brief, these air-
checks have made it possible for Columbia to gather together the
absolute cream of the greatest swing band in jazz history, caught at its
very peak moments.

es

SS

*The job of shepherding the band’s instruments, library, and trunks co that
tour went to Otis Ferguson, one of the best young writers of the time, whose
career was cut short in 1943 when the Merchant Marine ship on which he served
was bombed at Salerno Beach, Ferguson was among those killed below decks.

THE KING OF rie
BENNY GOODMAN

COMPLETE 1937-38 JAZZ CONCERT NO. 2

Broadcast Recordings of the Original Benny Goodman Orchestra, Trio and Quartet

Collective Orchestra Personnel: Benny Goodman, Clarinet; Harry James, Ziggy Elman,
Chris Griffin, Trumpets; Red Ballard, Vernon Brown, Murray MacHachern, Trombones;
Hymie Shertzer, George Koenig, Alto Saxes; Art Rollini, Babe Russin, Vido Musso,
Tenor Saxes; J. Stacy, Piano; A. Reuss, Guitar; H. Goodman, Bass; G. Krupa, Drums

Trio and Quartet: B. Goodman, Clarinet; T. Wilson, Piano; G. Krupa, Drums; L. Hampton, Vibraphone, added for Quartet

This treat is wonderful in itself, but there are also ramifications that
bring it to the level of the collector’s happy-hunting ground. Included
in this set are no less than 15 selections which Benny has never been
identified with on recordings in any form until now. (In the Carnegie
Hall album, wonderful as it was, Goodman performed only repertoire
which he had also recorded commercially.) In five other instances, the
form in which a selection appears in this album is quite different from
that in which Benny has recorded the same number — for example,
Benny once recorded Someday Sweetheart with his Trio, but here it’s
played by the full band.

Among these 20 “new” Goodman numbers, there are performances
of tunes that Benny himself hadn’t remembered playing — numbers
like Have You Met Miss Jones and Sweet Leilani which have since
become standards, but were then current pops which Benny included
on a broadcast because he happened to like them better than the
ordinary pops which song-pluggers were after him to put on the air.
There are even two on-the-spot improvisations by the Quartet for
which the radio announcer gave no titles, so — fifteen years later — we
had to think up names for them: Benny Sent Me and Killer Diller.
(The latter is a term Benny picked up from one of his ace arrangers,
Jimmy Mundy, who used it to describe a powerhouse swing perform-
ance on a fast tune. If you’re under 21, ask Mom or Pop —they
remember. )

*% * %

The Benny Goodman success story has been told too often to be
repeated again here,* but let it be said once more that out of the
depression year of 1935 Benny brought the public a new kind of
popular music in which there was dignity and recognition for the skilled
musician. Before Benny, dance music was a pretty grim affair and not
much fun either for the musicians or the public. By 1936, it was not
only fun but the dancers knew the names and faces behind the principal
solo instruments. This made it possible for fine musicians to emulate
Benny and start bands of their own, in which the leader was the star
musician, not just the guy who was the best one at counting the dollars
and buttering up the boss.

The band that made this album grew out of a series of recording
dates organized for Columbia in 1933 by John Hammond, a jazz fan
who has an unparalleled record of practical assistance to good jazz
musicians. John helped Benny organize the band for his first engage-
ment as a bandleader: a three-month run at Billy Rose’s Music Hall in
the summer of 1934. That fall, however, the infant Goodman band
landed its second job: a spot on the National Biscuit Company’s three-
hour Saturday night program, “Let’s Dance.” (Benny still uses the
show’s theme song, which he shared with the sweet band, Kel Murray’s,
and the Latin band, Xavier Cugat’s. The show helped spread Benny’s
reputation all over the country; in Chicago, a railroad station attendant
spotted the band’s trunks in a check-room and told Benny’s brother
Harry, “I’m sure pleased to meet you. Your band plays the finest
rumbas and tangos I’ve ever heard.’’)

*Nowhere better than in Irving Kolodin’s biography of Benny, The Kingdom
of Swing.

PAGE ONE

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of Columbia Records

Despite Benny’s moderate success at the Music Hall and the
definite popularity of his band on the “Let’s Dance” show, he found it
impossible to get another good booking in New York. Finally, to keep

_ the band working, Benny’s manager (Willard Alexander) took the long

chance of putting him into the Hotel Roosevelt, which had been Guy
Lombardo’s stamping grounds ever since Peter Minuit had told the
management that this was the sweetest music this side of heaven. Both
Benny and the Roosevelt survived, though it was touch and go for a
while.

A series of harrowing one-nighters and short runs across the
country (“What’s the matter —can’t you boys play any waltzes?”)
brought Benny to the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles on August 21,

1935. For the first hour, Benny tried the formula he had fallen into, of

trying to play music that the operators told him the public wanted.

Then he decided to haul out some of his Fletcher Henderson arrange- ~

ments and turn the boys loose: “If we had to flop, at least I’d do it my
own way, playing the kind of music I wanted to.” What happened was
destined to be repeated on more dance floors than Walter Johnson
struck out batters: half the crowd got out there and started dancing
and the other half pressed up to the bandstand and cheered the band
like crazy.

Benny was the sensation of the west coast that season, and went
on to still greater success at the Congress Hotel in Chicago (Benny’s
home town), where one newspaper reviewer even admitted that the
Goodman rhythm section was “comparable to Eddy Duchin’s, yet of a
different style.” The final triumph came in the fall of 1936 in New
York, where Benny was booked into the Madhattan Room of the Hotel
Pennsylvania (which no one of that generation will ever call by its
present name, the Statler).

Almost singlehandedly, Benny had brought good musicianship to
the public, aroused an unprecedented interest in individual performers,
set up a high standard for dance music that few —if any — bands have
equalled, and in general started something that hasn’t stopped yet.

Benny made jazz respectable, although the alarums were exceeded
only by the excursions when his fans daneed in the aisles and even
stormed the stage at the Paramount Theatre when he made his debut
as a stage-show headliner. Everything — records, radio, movies —
opened up big for Benny and the other bands that followed him. If
television had been ready for him, Benny probably could have launched
it by promising to appear every night.

What was the special quality of Benny’s success? Essentially it
was a combination of timing, musicianship, and enthusiasm. The public
was tired of the drabness of the depression and craved excitement.
“Swing” provided this combination of stimulation and release in a
satisfying form. Benny’s arrangements, either written by talented Negro
musicians or patterned after those of the best large Negro bands, were
deceptively simple; their bareness also called for exacting and inspired
performance. (As with a string quartet, there’s no room to hide; the
music is good enough on paper, but it takes fine musicianship to
produce it with maximum effect.)

Benny played an important part in another aspect of jazz: for the
first time, Negro and white musicians played side by side in major

(CONT'D ON PAGE TWO)

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BIX BEIDERBECKE
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_-(GONT’D FROM PAGE ONE)

hotels, on commercial network broadcasts, in theatres, in movies, and,
in fact, everywhere that Benny’s band played. First with the Trio,
which included Teddy Wilson on piano, and then with the Quartet,
which added Lionel Hampton on vibraphone, Benny broke the color
line despite the warnings of the fearful. The only reaction was that
audiences clamored for more of that wonderful music.

They are still clamoring today, and this set is the best answer we
could possibly give them. Many Masterworks customers have discov-
ered, through the years, that swing is valid and exciting; they loved
the Carnegie Hall album and will cherish this one as well. And the
youngsters who had never heard a really fine swing band until the
Carnegie set came out are going to get a new charge all over again.

But the most numerous category is that of the original Goodman
fans for whom this release is another magnificent recreation of their
slightly misspent youth. One of the pleasures I have had in recent
months has been to play test pressings of these recordings for friends
who were also avid admirers of Benny’s band in the thirties. The
Carnegie album had knocked them out, but this one stretched them on
the floor with their arms crossed.

Here’s the music that did it:

LET’S DANCE Band
RIDIN’ HIGH

What could be more appropriate than to start off with Benny’s theme,
and a few words from Benny himself? To point up the informality of
these broadcast recordings (and as a sharp contrast to the relative
perfection of the performances that follow) we couldn’t resist taking
this theme from the night that Benny forgot to play the familiar
clarinet tag, and rushed up to the mike just in time to whistle it through
his teeth. Let’s Dance, incidentally, is a swing version of Karl Maria
von Weber’s Invitation to the Dance.

Ridin’ High is a rare treat — a great Jimmy Mundy arrangement
of a 1936 pop tune, which somehow Benny never recorded. Harry
James blows some mad trumpet on this to split solo honors with
Benny. The band bites into this score with a vim usually reserved for
favored originals, not current tunes.

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT Trio

A marvelous jam tune, this is one of George Gershwin’s lesser-known
but better compositions. It was a brand new song when Benny put it
on one of his broadcasts with the Trio. Unlike present-day band leaders,
Benny didn’t play a great number of current pops, but he did all the
best ones and somehow there seemed to be more of them then than
there are now. (But as somebody pointed out, that’s what they were
saying back in the thirties, too.)

VIBRAPHONE BLUES (vocal by Lionel Hampton)
THE SHEIK OF ARABY

Quartet

During the summer of 1936, Benny was in Hollywood working on a
movie called “The Big Broadcast of 1937” (?), with a cast that ran the
gamut from Stokowski to Martha Raye to Bob Burns. John Hammond
took him to a joint called the Paradise Cafe to hear Lionel Hampton,
whom Benny had heard of as a fine drummer for the Les Hite band
which had recorded with Louis Armstrong some six years earlier. In
the interim, Lionel had developed into a fantastic vibraphonist, and
one hearing was all Benny needed to convince him that Hamp would
be a tremendous asset to his organization.

Vibraphone Blues, an improvisation on the 12-bar blues, was one
of the first sides cut with Lionel, but— as with every other “repeat”
recording in this album — it is included in this collection because this
performance is superior to the original recording. For his vocal, Lionel
uses a new twist on an old blues, and then salutes each member of the
Goodman Trio, with whom he joined forces to create the Quartet. On
The Sheik, the boys settle down to serious instrumental business;
Benny did this tune in 1940 for Columbia with his Sextet, but this is
an original for the Quartet, made from a broadcast during Benny’s run
at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

PECKIN’ | Band
SUNNY DISPOSISH

Peckin’ is Harry James’ tune; his arrangement and performance of it
with Benny’s old boss, Ben Pollack, helped bring Harry to B.G.’s
attention. Based on Cootie Williams’ trumpet solo on Duke Ellington’s
1931 recording of Rockin’ In Rhythm, this number celebrated one of
the routines developed by jitterbug dancers, in which the partners each
drop to one knee and “peck” over each other’s shoulders in time to
the music. The dance is forgotten now, but the music more than stands

OS_—180 INSERT C

PAGE TWO

up. Incidentally, this comes from a broadcast from Los Angeles’ Palo-
mar Ballroom, where Benny had enjoyed his first triumph as a band-
leader.

Harry and Benny again contribute fine solos in an instrumental
version of Sunny Disposish, a fine pop for which George Gershwin’s
brother, Ira, wrote the lyrics. Once again, Benny never got around to
cutting this tune for posterity, although it was one of the favorites in
his 1937 “book.”

NAGASAKI Quartet

Another “first” is this whirlwind salute to the town “where the men
all chew tobacky and the women wicky-wacky-woo.” The Quartet gives
this standard a frantic workout, wrapping it up with a slowed-down
coda and a “good evening, friends” finish which brings out once again
the group’s love of contrasts — and a plain old good time.

ST. LOUIS BLUES Band

Of all the numbers in this batch of resurrectia, St. Louis Blues is the
one I most enjoy playing for the generation of Benny Goodman fans
who hung around this band the way I used to. Some of them haven’t
recovered yet from exposure to this happy miracle which took place
during a one-nighter broadcast from the Hartford Armory.

As the regular arrangement (with solos by Benny and Ziggy
Elman) draws to a close, Benny senses that the boys are getting an
extra boot out of Fletcher Henderson’s score this evening, so he flashes
the sign to keep it going. Harry James gets up and Gene Krupa gives
him a two-beat platform solid enough to hold all of Connecticut and
several counties of southern Massachusetts. Then the leading citizen
of Cape Girardeau, Mo. — Jess Stacy — takes over for two choruses,
and finally the band comes back with some fierce riffing, closing with
the venerable “Oh, not enough!” which Josephine used to play for
Napoleon on her home-made virginal.

SUGAR FOOT STOMP Band

Sugar Foot Stomp, another of the great Henderson arrangements, is
a tune which Fletcher himself helped introduce to a wide public back
in the twenties. Written by King Oliver and his protege, Louis Arm-
strong, this tune was originally called Dippermouth Blues. Harry James
in common with all trumpet players, bases his solo on the traditional
choruses which Oliver originated.

MOONGLOW
YM A DING DONG DADDY FROM DUMAS
I HADN’T ANYONE TILL YOU (vocal by Martha Tilton)

Quartet

First, another early Quartet “arrangement” — in fact, the first one cut
by that combination, sixteen years before the appearance of this
version. This is one of the most beautiful pop songs of the thirties, and
the tender improvisations of Messrs. Wilson, Hampton, and Goodman
bring out its richness as few readings ever have.

If Benny’s Ding Dong Daddy isn’t the most exciting rendition of
this venerable jazz standard since Louis Armstrong first scatted his
way through two sizzling choruses and then blew the studio apart with
his horn, this hungry author will cheerfully chomp on his favorite
beret. Teddy’s cascading runs, Hamp’s metallic torrents, and Benny’s
fluid clarinet lead into one of Gene Krupa’s inimitable drum solos. The
coda is what the British would dub “a smasher.”

I Hadn’t Anyone Till You was one of the day’s better pops. In an
unusual interpretation with the Quartet, Martha Tilton (the perma-
nent replacement for the band’s original vocalist, Helen Ward) sings
the opening chorus and then comes back after solos by Benny and
Teddy for the last sixteen. Hampton dresses up the retards at the end,
and Martha then goes into a second ending with a perfect take-off
on the great Mildred Bailey.

ALWAYS Band
DOWN SOUTH CAMP MEETIN’

Art Rollini, who was usually content to play a solid-man role in the
impeccable Goodman saxophone section, plays the opening solo on
this Henderson arrangement of Always, one of Irving Berlin’s finest.
Benny and Murray McEachern also contribute solos, but it’s the band
itself which really stars. The brass-saxophone teamwork in the third
chorus is a classic example of the band’s ensemble sound.

Another Henderson arrangement that Benny still uses is Down
South Camp Meetin’, which Fletcher originally composed for his own
band in 1935. This is one of those tunes in which the arrangement itself
is an integral part of the composition — just as in the longhair field.
The last chorus, with the clarinets first in low register against the

g

brass, and then up an octave for the last bars, never failed to whip
the audience into a happy ecstasy. (Note that a joyful customer who
happens to be within mike range cries out ‘““What a band!” We debated
for a while about cutting this out, because we thought people might
think we had dubbed it in.)

SWEET LEILANI Trio

This tune, which won an Academy Award in 1937, is one that Benny
hadn’t remembered playing until we began editing Bill Savory’s air-
checks. So great is the contrast between Leilani’s Hawaiian origins and
the environment in which the Trio places her that Benny calls this
one Takin’ Leilani Uptown—a reference to Manhattan’s Harlem,
which in the thirties was still jumping as it hasn’t jumped in succeeding
decades. Krupa’s tom-tomming in the minor bit presaged, perhaps, the
coming success of Hawaiian War Chant.

SOMETIMES I’M HAPPY Band.
ROLL ’EM

Fletcher Henderson arranged the first one and, possibly more than any
other Goodman score, this one has always been pointed out as a great
“quiet” swing classic. The chorus for the sax section is one of Fletcher’s
most inspired passages, and its interpretation under the faultless leader-
ship of Hymie Shertzer has always been a standard which no other
section has ever matched. Harry James (more than filling the shoes
of Bunny Berigan, whose solo in this spot has long been a collector’s
favorite), Vido Musso, and Benny are the soloists. The crackling buzz
which can be detected in a couple of places is local color: static caused
by lightning the night Savory took this one off the air.

Roll’Em is a Mary Lou Williams opus which was inspired by the
boogie-woogie resurgence of the mid-thirties. The Goodman band put ©
the emphasis on the fast-blues rather than the eight-to-the-bar aspect of
the medium, with the result that the boys swung all the way instead
of being caught in the push-pull that usually bogs down a band boogie-
woogie arrangement. Jess Stacy and Harry James help Benny puild
this into a long-play classic. I remember Harry playing four choruses
in a row on this tune many times in those days, but never as sweep-
ingly as this performance from a dance hall in Pittsburgh.

KING PORTER STOMP Band

Jelly Roll Morton, who composed this tribute to the great ragtime
pianist, Porter King, authored dozens of equally fine stomps, but this
one caught the public fancy most securely. As with several other
Goodman successes, this arrangement was originally made by Fletcher
Henderson for his own band. It underwent a few alterations in the
years that Benny played it, such as the elimination of the last “button”
note in both the brass and sax section’s question-and-answer riffs in the
final chorus, and the introduction of a retard in the coda, which Benny ~
used to worry about constantly but which came off perfectly the night
this version was broadcast. Harry James and Vido Musso join Benny
as soloists in this hallowed classic.

HAVE YOU MET MISS JONES Trio

Rodgers and Hart enjoyed a modest success with this tune in their 1937 ©
show, “I’d Rather Be Right” (which starred George M. Cohan). Benny .
liked it well enough to broadcast a sedately swung Trio treatment one
night. His choice has certainly been justified; Miss Jones has joined.
the ranks of the modest but hardy standards which are popular today
long after their more brash contemporaries have been relegated to the
publishers’ overstock scrap-piles. Teddy Wilson has a lovely half-chorus
on this one.

SHINE

Benny recorded this tune for Columbia in 1945 with his Sextet, but —
this is a quite different reading of the classic jam favorite. Benny and
Lionel really shine, and there’s a bit of by-play which those who know
the Quartet’s interpretation of Avalon (in the Carnegie Hall Jazz Con-
cert album) will especially enjoy. In the second half of his solo, Hamp
plays a downward run punctuated by a repeated B-flat, which is part
of the Avalon arrangement. In the next chorus, following the passage
involving Krupa’s cowbell, Lionel breaks out again with the Avalon
lick. This time Benny’s carrying the lead, and he instantly falls into
his part of the Avalon arrangement, but at the end of the fourth bar
Benny slurs out of it in a wonderfully expressive way which seems to
say “Come on, Hamp, let’s get back to Shine!” — leaving Lionel to
finish the run on his own. A Krupa break sends the crowd off to a
happy coda. |

Quartet

(CONT'D ON PAGE THREE)

(CONT'D FROM PAGE TWO) |
MINNIE THE MOOCHER’S WEDDING DAY Band

It’s a pleasure to keep bringing Fletcher Henderson into the picture
as the man responsible for one of the great band arrangements in this
set. I hope you don’t get tired of reading Fletcher’s name constantly,
but hearing just one of his scores is enough to convince anyone that
we made no mistake including so many of his arrangements among

_ these recordings, just as Benny was so right in devoting such a large

portion of his “book” to Fletcher’s manuscripts.

This, again, is from the old Henderson band’s repertoire. Three
cute things to watch for: the way Benny picks up Harry James’ last
phrase as the basis of his following solo, the tightly-written interplay

between the brass and reeds in the next chorus, and the way Krupa

builds a subtly accented press roll through the last two choruses up

- to a break-away climax. (That’s lightning again in the 14th bar of
‘the penultimate chorus. )

~ RUNNIN’ WILD

Quartet

Gallop is the word for the way this one whips along! ’Long about
the ninety-fourth chorus, Benny’s going a mile-a-minute and Gene
Krupa yells “One more!”, switches to four-to-the-bar on his bass drum,
and from then on the fans squeezed up against the front of the band-

stand must have been dropping like flies in the St. Louis Browns’

YOU TURNED THE TABLES ON ME

outfield. We had a bunch of Runnin’ Wilds to choose from, and the
arguments in favor of some of the others were pretty valid, but this
one had the extra spark.

Band
(vocal by Helen Ward)

DARKTOWN STRUTTER®S’ BALL

: It wouldn’t do to have an album like this without an example of how
the band played a regular pop tune of the day, complete with a vocal
chorus by Helen Ward. There were at least three others in my class

at the Horace Mann School who were ready for drastic measures when

| ‘Helen retired in 1936 to marry a heartless fellow 1 in Westchester who
ate didn’t realize what deprivations he was causing the Goodman fans.

(The score at Princeton and Yale was correspondingly higher.) Any-
way, here’s our favorite girl of the era in a deceptively simple arrange-
ment of a fine pop which will never be identified in our minds with
anyone else.

The Goodman band’s great secret was its ensemble unity — both
as to the tone it produced and the phrasing which made it swing with
such seeming effortlessness. Its arrangements required a combination
of precision that dealt in fractions of split seconds, and a casual loose-
ness that was as deceptive as an English tweed jacket.

Nothing brought this home to me stronger than the way the
Goodman band used to play the Spud Murphy arrangement of Dark-
town Strutters (which is entirely different from one his 1942 band
has in Columbia GL 501). It became so popular that the publisher
printed it, virtually intact, as a stock for any dance band to use. Many
times, at school dances, I heard a reasonably good band play it. The
notes were the same, but that was all. The definitive version of this
score is here, with Ziggy and Benny playing the solos and Chris Griffin
leading Benny and Art Rollini in the trumpet-clarinet-tenor “dixieland”
passage.

MY GAL SAL Quartet

One of the Quartet’s great favorites was this mellow classic written in
1905 by Paul Dresser, brother of novelist Theodore Dreiser. (Paul

changed the spelling of his name out of consideration for other mem-

bers of the family. Songwriting was not exactly a dignified craft fifty
years ago.) This rendition builds up from bouncy swing all-out drive,
with Teddy, Benny, Lionel, and Gene all getting in their licks. This
was taken, by the way, from a 1 a.m. broadcast at the Hotel Pennsyl-
vania, for which I remember having a ringside table. (How do I remem-

OSL—180 INSERT D

——— aeons

PAGE THREE

ber so well? It was after one of our proms, and my date was a cute
17-year old who was cruel enough to order a small steak. When you’re
almost 18 yourself, you never forget an incident like that.)

BUGLE CALL RAG Band

Hardy collectors will remember Benny’s 20-year old Columbia record-
ing of this Dean Kincaide arrangement, back in the National Biscuit
Company days. Shertzer, Rollini, and Ballard were the only men from

that band who were on hand for this performance, which is one of the
most exciting workouts this New Orleans Rhythm Kings classic has
ever enjoyed. Art Rollini, Ziggy Elman, Murray McEachern, and
Benny steam solos that lead into the final ensemble choruses, under
which Krupa contributes some of the greatest ensemble drumming
of his career.

CLARINET MARMALADE Band

This scorching Jimmy Mundy arrangement is another which Benny
just didn’t happen to record at the time, although it was one of the
more frequently played “killer dillers.”’ This multi-strain classic (cre-
ated by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band) has long been a favorite
of small bands, but this adaptation for full orchestra successfully
captures the excitement of a dixieland interpretation. Aside from
Benny, there’s a solo by Harry James which begins with one of the most
hair-raising entrances of all time. It’s strictly like a guy racing out
onto an icy pond and suddenly discovering he ain’t got skates.

TIME ON MY HANDS Trio

If Benny did nothing else, he proved that swing doesn’t have to be loud
and fast to be exciting. This Trio rendition of the Vincent Youmans
favorite is swing personified. Teddy Wilson’s: charming solo Passages
and a delightful chorus for which he changes key are the highlights of
this lovely arrangement, though Benny contributes some notable pretty
playing.

Right now is as good a time as any to clarify the famous story of
how the Goodman Trio grew out of an after-dinner session at Mildred
Bailey’s house in Forest Hills in 1935. It’s often implied that Gene
Krupa as well as Teddy Wilson played with Benny at Mildred’s that
night; the fact is that the drummer was ‘Mildred’s cousin, Carl
Bellinger, whom I met a couple of years later when he was a senior
at Yale and I was a freshman. He was a good drummer, too, but his
real love was flying. Today he’s a hotrock test pilot for one of the
big aircraft companies, completely undisturbed by the omission of his
name from the Goodman histories.

STARDUST Band

Somewhere in the United States, for the past twenty-odd years, a
woman named Dorothy Kelly has been having a difficult time convinc-
ing her friends that if she hadn’t given a fellow-student at the Uni-
versity of Indiana the air, America would never have had its all-time
favorite ballad. And that man, as the cornballs would put it, was
none other than Hoagy Carmichael, and the song he penned that lonely
night was Stardust.

Benny created something of a revolution in the ranks when he
dared come up with a swing arrangement of the old heart-wrencher, but
Fletcher treated it reverently enough so that the right wing didn’t quite
secede. For aficionados only: dig Stacy behind first and third choruses,
and demonstrate to your friends as you play this that you know that
Allan Reuss is going to contribute the all-time shortest guitar solo at
the end.

BENNY SENT ME
EVERYBODY LOVES MY BABY

Quartet

This is a pair of whiz-bangeroos that Benny hadn’t remembered ever
playing. The first is an on-the-air improvisation which didn’t even have

a title until Bill Savory made one up for purposes of identification —
and an apter one was impossible to find. The boys lay down a terrific
beat on this, especially behind Hampton’s combined vibraphone and
“vocal” solo. (His irrepressible voice has been described as rather
sheepish, but listen before you ask why.)

As he often did 1n his shows and broadcasts, Benny follows up this
sizzling Quartet improvisation with another. The odd thing about
Everybody Loves My Baby was that Benny, before hearing this record-
ing for the first time in many years, was prepared to swear that the
Quartet had never played this tune at all. Well, if they hadn’t it would
have been a tremendous loss — for me, this is just about the greatest
Quartet performance that has ever been captured, on record and plenty
alive. Nuff sed. Just play it!

JOSEPHINE Band

Benny often made swing instrumentals out of current pops rather than -
always have them sung by his vocalist. Josephine lent herself quite
readily to this scheme, with the happy results which you can now hear
for the first time on records. By the time this was made, the dancers
had come to know Harry James quite well (he left shortly after to
form his own band) and the ripple of applause you hear just before
his solo is their recognition as he stood up to take his half-chorus.

KILLER DILLER Quartet

As a sort of encore to the overwhelming Everybody Loves My Baby,
we decided to program in this spot the only performance of another
untitled original. Some great arranged effects are in this swiftie, which
has a tantalizing theme and a chord sequence that almost — but not
quite — matches any number of standards. (We know the one it’s
closest to, but it’s more fun to make you guess!) Krupa gets off some —
tremendous drumming under the tight ensemble work of Benny, Teddy,
and Lionel.

SOMEDAY SWEETHEART Band
CARAVAN

GOODBYE

This fine arrangement of Someday Sweetheart hadn’t been recorded
because Benny had already done it with his Trio. The trombone team
of Red Ballard and Vernon Brown introduces the theme of this old
Jelly Roll Morton standard, and then the saxes take over for sixteen
bars of their incredible swinging phrasing over Stacy’s fills. Harry and
Benny contribute solos and the last chorus closes with the band riding
over Gene’s usual fine drumming.

Caravan is a predecessor to the famous Sing, Sing, Sing (cf. the
Carnegie Hall album) in two respects: it opens with Gene Krupa
laying down a drum beat similar to that which was to characterize the
later showpiece, and closes with more of the same plus a Harry James
pick-up that goes into a closing phrase which also was to become an
integral part of the Sing, Sing, Sing arrangement.

The interpretation is completely different from Duke Ellington’s
(the tune was written for Duke’s band by his trombonist, Juan Tizol);
Benny’s is essentially a swing arrangement with the mood aspect of
the composition playing a secondary role. After Benny sets the pace,
James blasts a wild solo that’s guaranteed to steam your toe-nails off,
Benny returns, with Jess and Gene working overtime behind him, The
finish is a perfect ending to this exciting recorded concert.

Now, unhappily, it’s time for Goodbye, the familiar Goodman
theme. No one is sorrier than we that there couldn’t be more of this
lovely Gordon Jenkins composition, but Benny never got to play much
of it on his broadcasts before the announcer had to cut in to say some-
thing like, “This is George Avakian, pounding his faithful Royal for
the third consecutive week-end in his palatial single-decker apartment
on Manhattan’s west side, joining Benny Goodman in wishing you
many happy hours of listening to the greatest swing music ever
recorded.”